In the past few weeks, I was able to read Frank Peretti's best-selling Christian novel, This Present Darkness. The supposed fictional account of an entire town, including a local college, most of the churches, and many of the businesses being taken over by a shadowy, New-Age group, struck a familiar chord with me.

The story weaves many threads together, pitting praying Christians against the demonically controlled "Universal Consciousness Society" and its front organization, the "Omni Corporation.'' Before good triumphs over evil, however, we see that those committed to "world peace" through Eastern mysticism will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, including harassment, smear campaigns, larceny, violence—even murder. Demon-possessed civic and governmental leaders are in total control at every level, who change laws, alter records, confiscate, and imprison to reach their ends.

"What's the connection?" you are asking. First of all, let me say that until ICR became embroiled in its difficulties with the California State Department of Education and its Superintendent over the right to teach science from a creationist perspective in its graduate school, none of us had ever been involved in lawsuits or political bureaucracies before, to more than a nominal degree. But what an eye opener! It now seems to us that those in political power have excessive, if not near-total, control over anything they desire. We have found ourselves in an adversarial relationship not of our making.

Second, perhaps due to the popularity of the creation message these days, but also to a bitter hatred of Christianity, it seems that many individuals and powerful organizations have aligned themselves in a united front to destroy ICR. Those specifically involved include most of the major humanistic, atheistic, skeptic, and civil liberties groups (you could name most of them) as well as the so-called "intellectual elite" in higher education. Their goal is total control of education—total mind control. Already, many laws, policies, and programs are in place whose effects will be more pronounced in the days ahead. Evidently they feel powerful enough to move against ICR, perhaps feeling that if ICR falls, Christian education as a whole will be severely weakened.

These same groups are moving against Christian groups on a number of fronts: tax status, credentials, counseling, use permits, hiring of homosexuals, new-age teaching in public schools, banning Christmas scenes in public, etc., etc. Our religious freedoms are being stripped away, and already our influence in the community, as salt and light, is limited.

In the novel, the ruling officials were bound together in covert Satan worship. Although I haven’t run into widespread occultism in governmental circles yet, there is a dominant anti-Christian flavor to much of what is going on—an effort to totally secularize society. It is becoming more and more obvious that the battle must be fought primarily on a spiritual level.

The Christians "won" in the novel. In our case, the battle has been joined. If ever you prayed for ICR and the truth of God's creation of this world, now is the time.